Judea Pearl Named AI Pioneer by Boston Global Forum in Honor of America’s 250th Anniversary

Judea Pearl, a chancellor’s professor emeritus of computer science at the UCLA Samueli School of Engineering, has been named one of 50 AI Pioneers by nonprofit think tank Boston Global Forum and its AI World Society initiative. 

The recognition honors prominent U.S. scientists, technologists, scholars and business leaders who are described as “most powerfully shaping America’s role in the Age of Artificial Intelligence — and, through America, the governance of AI for the world.”

The announcement was released to coincide with the nation’s 250th anniversary. Pearl is one of 10 honorees in the category of “AI Research & Science — The Architects of the AI Age” alongside leaders such as Sam Altman, CEO of OpenAI, and Vint Cerf, Google’s chief internet evangelist and a UCLA alumnus who co-developed the TCP/IP protocols underpinning the internet.

The other five categories include honorees such as Amazon founder Jeff Bezos; Nobel Laureate Jennifer Doudna, who co-developed CRISPR-Cas9 gene editing; Nvidia founder, president and CEO Jensen Huang; Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella; and former Google CEO and chairman Eric Schmidt.

Pearl is recognized for his contributions to AI research from the 1980s to the present, including the development of the Bayesian networks and a mathematical framework for causal inference — foundational to how AI reasons under uncertainty. His book, “The Book of Why,” helped reshape how scientists and AI researchers think about explanation and causality.

Among Pearl’s many honors are the Turing Award, the BBVA Foundation Frontiers of Knowledge Award and the World Leader in AI World Society Award. He is a member of the National Academy of Engineering and the National Academy of Sciences. He is also a fellow of the Royal Society of London, the American Statistical Association, the Association for Computing Machinery, the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, the Cognitive Science Society, the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers and the Association for the Advancement of Artificial Intelligence.

Michael Dukakis, former Massachusetts governor and visiting professor of public policy at UCLA, co-founded the Boston Global Forum in 2012 with Nguyen Anh Tuan and two Harvard professors to advance initiatives on global policy and technology governance. The AI World Society was launched in 2017 as part of those efforts. Pearl and his fellow AI pioneers were honored at the forum’s America at 250 conference held at Harvard University in May.